Design for Social Change: Harnessing the Student Voice to Prevent Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment

Respect.Now.Always. is an Australia-wide campaign to address and eliminate sexual assault and harassment within universities. The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has taken a proactive stance and established a Student Consultative Group and a Senior Working Group to address this issue. UTS Design Innovation Research Centre (DI:rc) was engaged to understand diverse UTS student perspectives on sexual violence and identify student-centred opportunities for prevention and support. Using a participatory design research approach, DI:rc developed insights on UTS student experiences in interacting with UTS. Rather than being simple user-centred research interactions, these engagements reframed the interaction with students as participatory experiences where they were given an opportunity to engage in two-way dialogue which strengthened relationships within the UTS community and provided an opportunity for perspectives to shift on this topic. This unique design research approach was made possible through careful work establishing trust with senior stakeholders, and leads the way for more novel activations to engage the community in preventing sexual assault and harassment.